IP / Regulatory Law Watch Innovation Deserts, Innovation Data, & Adult Education By: Professor Shubba Ghosh The Innovation Hub is a comprehensive database compiled and maintained by The Henry Ford.[1] Within the Innovation Hub is the Innovation Atlas, “an interactive custom mapping tool, or geographic information system (GIS), of the United States that visualizes the education and socioeconomic barriers impacting innovation.” The Atlas leverages “the initial release of social mobility data from the Opportunity Atlas at Harvard University, [with which] The Henry Ford built a custom proprietary model that includes school attributes and additional socioeconomic attributes and validated research, to produce the Innovation Atlas Score. The score is then applied to 85,000 public schools across America, providing transparency about the inequitable barriers and justifying the need for invention education.” The Atlas aggregates various metrics that influence innovation at the county level. These measures are presented through an interactive map of the 3140 counties across the 50 United States. These 3140 counties are ranked according to the barriers to innovation from least barriers to few to some to several and to most barriers. For these five barrier ratings, there is an equal representation of ratings (Most, Several, Some, Few, Least / 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% percentile) across national and state levels. This was done so that researchers could visually outline the landscape for STEM and Innovation. Every school in the country is scored, so the researcher is able to ‘re-rate’ the schools for a different percentile. One variable that can be examined is the presence of institutions of adult education on the distribution of barriers to innovation across counties. Three measures of adult education are collected in the Atlas: the presence of a 2-year college in the county, the presence of less than 2-year colleges in the county, and the presence of community colleges in the county. Table One provides a portrait of the distribution of counties by barriers to innovation. As a preliminary portrait, Table One suggests that the presence of adult education can reduce barriers to innovation. For example, looking across all countries we see an equal number of counties across the rankings of innovation. But looking at counties with 2-year colleges, we see a larger number of counties with “least barriers to innovation” and a smaller number with “most barriers to innovation.” The distribution of the rankings skews towards the least barriers to innovation. We see a similar shift when we look at counties with less than 2-year colleges. We do see a decrease in counties with larger barriers to innovation when we consider the counties with a community college and a slight drop in counties with the least barriers to entry. Further study is needed to plot these differences and test their statistical significance. In addition, we can look to examine correlates between adult education and other factors that influence barriers to innovation to see how the environment within counties shapes the local innovation ecosystem. [1] https://inhub.thehenryford.org/ 
What about adult education influences barriers to innovation? One factor is the presence of programs on entrepreneurship within adult education to target adult learners. These programs can promote innovation among adult learners who may be more inclined to engage in entrepreneurship than the broader population. The next section presents information about these programs and a research program for further study of the influence of these programs. | 
